“Healing our birth and understanding its impact on our life is a great step forward and gives hope for our human race.” S. Ward (2014/2022)

The Fractal Events of a Human Life

After being introduced to the concepts of fractals by Dr Jean Houston in 1991 (Ward, 2019) I combined these ideas with our work with pre and perinatal psychotherapy. Looking at human life through the happenings, moods, personality traits, characteristics, and positive and negative events occurring in life we discovered the order of fractal patterns present in lives from their primal places. Clients were experiencing the unexperienced. Not only were they understanding that their lives were rhythms and patterns of the states of their parents at conception but also everything that happened during their pregnancy and birth. The following case study offers some of these experiences.

Case Study: Mandy

Mandy, now in her early fifties, was a former client from some years back. We had worked together then on her difficult birth, during which her birth mother had tuberculosis (TB) and eventually died. Mandy was adopted at four years of age when her father could no longer cope with four children on his own. In the day Mandy was suicidal and over the years had experienced similar feelings when life became intolerable. Her doctor had prescribed drugs for depression. Mandy, now in her early fifties, knew that she could work through this by talking it out with me. Her adoptive mother had been very sick for two years and had very recently died. They had been very close, and Mandy nursed her for two years at home. Her adoptive father had died some years ago.

After her adoptive mother died Mandy became depressed and suicidal. She knew something else was going on which was that there was a link between the death of her adoptive mother and her own womb and birth experiences with her birth mother and it needed untangling. Mandy did not want to die but blamed herself for her birth mother’s death and now also her adoptive mother’s death.

Underlying all this was Mandy’s greatest fear and terror in utero that things were so bad that no one would ever be able to care for her and provide for her needs satisfactorily. Nothing would ever be enough. Mandy shared with me that to attempt suicide she would tie a plastic bag over her head tightly and suffocate. This is a rare way to choose to attempt suicide. I came across it in the 1970s and 1980s when teenagers were sniffing glue. Similar deaths were reported as accidental owing to the fact that it was possible that a glue sniffing incident had accidentally led to death.

In her session with me, Mandy sat in the chair with her eyes closed; she went back in time and relived the memory of conception and the pain of coming into a physical body. Her mother was too sick to help her and Mandy felt deeply that no one cared. Her mother had been advised not to have more children due to her failing health. Mandy spoke of smelling and tasting blood, thought to come from the TB her mother was dying from. It was imprinted into Mandy that she had killed her mother and now was responsible for her adoptive mother dying. This terror had dominated her life but her adoptive mother had provided the needs she required lovingly.

Mandy then experienced being in the amniotic sac inside her birth mother, tasting blood; it resonated with the dying days of her adoptive mother who haemorrhaged at home before she died. It caused both Mandy and her adoptive mother great distress. Mandy then described the feelings of being in the amniotic sac, describing pressure in her head, a tightness around her throat, and a tightness near the umbilical cord. Suddenly from being in the amniotic sac inside mother, Mandy was aware of being outside mother but still in the sac. She also suddenly remembered that she had been born with a caul (cowl) over her head. A cowl is like a monk’s hood but the encaul birth is when the baby is born still inside an intact amniotic sac. (web ref. needed?) It is a very rare occurrence happening in less than 1 in 80,000 births. Midwives have been known to say it is a beautiful thing to see what a baby might look like while growing in the womb.

Suddenly Mandy expressed that this could be closure. She had found some of the historical places of terror in her birth and realised how these had been projected onto her adoptive mother. She recognised that she had a lot to meditate upon as she understood that her mother did love her; the amniotic sac had its positive side because it kept her safe and protected her. she She was a 10-month baby and either she or her mother kept her inside to be cared for until they were both ready for the birth. I expressed that it would take time to heal; her head felt heavy but the rest of her felt free of fear. She was aware that the midwife in the maternity hospital had to split the amniotic sac and free her. She was aware in her life she needed to experience more freedom.

“I don’t need a plastic bag anymore – it represented the amniotic sac. I saw it as a death place but it was also protecting me and keeping me safe” she said. Mandy’s birth scripts that had ruled her life could be changed to positive ones. We wrote down all the names of people in Mandy’s life who cared for her. She did say that a lot of her pain was not knowing her birth mother. This was a complicated complex experience for Mandy to work through but metaphorically I believe she has begun to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Why Would a Person Want to Commit Suicide, Attempt Para-Suicide or Self-Harm?

When working in the area of pre and perinatal periods of life relating to suicide and para-suicide, we see patterns or fractals emerging from early experiences in a human’s life that prove to be a directive that death is the only way out. The individual feels they have to complete this task themselves and end their life to find peace. In this primal time, it may only have been temporary but it was sufficiently imprinted at a cellular level for the person to have stored in their psyche, memory and consciousness. When external life events get so unbearably painful and replicate these early feelings from the primal place, the individual responds as the early conditioning has scripted, to end their life to avoid the pain. It is not possible to survive if the odds are too great against the organism and the only answer is to end life. For all professionals working with suicide and para-suicide, there is a very fine line with some clients.

Case Study of Self-Harming and Self-Inflicted Injuries

Self-inflicted injuries come from the place of constant pain being the only companion in utero and then in later life. The following case study is graphic concerning self-injurious harm and the full case study may be found in my book Healing birth to heal the Earth (Ward, 2019):

Ellie came to us in the 1990s, a former nun in much pain, but she confirmed that she had found an explanation in the pre and perinatal period of her life, where she spent her gestation in a toxic womb. Her mother kept her seventh pregnancy a secret and Ellie continued to hide her own feelings throughout life. She stated that she had no need of a mother and constantly searched for the Divine in her life whom she felt she had been parted from. Feeling no one cared for her and that nothing was nourishing for her in the womb, she existed in pain, her constant companion. Later she confirmed that her self-injurious behaviour came directly from this place and that experiencing the primal place where they originated saved her life from a death by suicide.

Ellie told me,

At first, my injuries were accidental: cut knees, bruised shins, the usual childhood injuries, but I loved my wounds - large chunks of skin caused by hockey sticks & balls. I was fearless: tackled on the hockey field, clashed sticks on flesh, and wore my wounds like trophies. Later my injuries were self-inflicted, usually on my arms. I remember beating my arms on a cast iron bed. The feelings were familiar. Once I punctured the half-moon of my fingernail with a geometry compass. The whole finger became infected but the relief was enormous. I share my story as my personal healing continues and hope that it helps others to be aware of where their own places of origin of pain and dysfunction come from. There is great hope to get through the physical, mental and emotional pain to reach the spiritual dimension that so many of us desire.

Dr Frank Lake and the Four Levels of Foetal Response

First, it is important to mention that in 1975 Stanislav Grof named four major levels during pregnancy, the Basic Perinatal Matrices: BPM 1 before birth; BPM11 at the beginning of labour before the cervix opens; BPM111 in the struggle to get out; BPM 1V when having emerged the baby starts to breathe and establishes a new existence, (BPM1-1V). (Grof, S. 1975) Frank Lake added to the four stages Grof created, with four levels of foetal response. He called Level 1 an ideally good state in which the embryonic person was aware that the situation was satisfactory. Warmth, tenderness, caring and love were there to make a safe and loving environment and give the necessary nourishment at a core level.

Lake, after years of more research, extended BPM 1 to include the three trimesters: 1) 0-3 months in the womb; 2) 4-6 months in the womb; 3) 7–9 months in the womb (Lake, F. 1988). Also within BPM 1, Lake created the Dynamic Life Cycle which he referred to as the dynamics of the early mother/child relationship (Lake, 1988). He based the model on Acceptance, Sustenance, Status and Achievement which are the components of healthy normal dynamics of human behaviour in a baby accepted by its parents. When things went wrong it meant the life cycle was reversed and a person could spend a lifetime trying to achieve to become accepted acceptance, instead of their feeling accepted assisting achievement. Certainly, when this happens the individual can become a lifelong depressive.

The 2nd Level of response may be called a coping level. There was a failure to meet the essential foetal needs and the foetus lost hope of the ‘ideal’ and attempted to cope with the deficit and its distress. The inability to handle the situation by coping, in the face of too severe and too prolonged unremitting deficiency of maternal recognition of the foetal presence, leads inevitably to Level 3: total opposition. Facing the terrible opposition of all that foetal life should be and the invasive maternal distress, the person exists only outside the body where pain cannot reach. This endless and relentless distress drives the organism into Level 4: transmarginal stress. It is here, beyond the margin, stressed beyond bearing, that the foetus longs not for life but for death. In the 1950s Frank Lake adopted the Pavlovian Theory of transmarginal stress as being relevant to babies experiencing the abandonment of maternal emotional needs. He went on to discover mirror images of hysterical and schizoid reactions as a result of this distress (Lake, 2005).

Types of Suicide Appearing to Coincide With Events in the Pre & Perinatal Period

This total opposition and transmarginal stress can be present right from the beginning in the conception stage where parental lust, anger, drunkenness, neglect, contempt and detachment may be present and can cause a fractal pattern throughout life. Some people who are suicidal appear to have never accepted their incarnation into life as a physical body. They have never wanted to be here. Some at a soul level have only wanted to return from where they believe they came from away from evolutionary responsibility.

In our early years of working, we spent a lot of time on birth trauma related to the types of suicide or para-suicide people were experiencing. The question of homicide and how people kill also was discussed but we have no research on this, except the rage and anger in the clients. I believe it is relevant and research needs to follow this hypothesis through.

Suicide re-enacting strangulation by the cord in utero or the cord around the neck at birth may result in hanging. Drug overdosing may be related to a drugged birth or medication taken during the pregnancy. Self-poisoning does link to what was coming through the cord as the foetus depends on the nourishment coming through the cord from mother to baby in utero. Eating disorders and Anorexia Nervosa (why italics ?) which may be seen as slow death techniques may be identified with placental deficiency just before birth when the mother for some reason stops the nourishment travelling down the cord to the baby. The mother not eating causes the foetus great distress with hunger and near starvation. The scene is set for eating disorder problems in the future. This is no one’s fault but a reality that there is a historical, physical and emotional place of origin.

Suicide when falling from a place of height, such as a bridge, cliff or high building, may be linked to the experience of the blastocyst falling from the end of the fallopian tube into the uterus to find implantation and a safe place to be, experiencing absolute terror, but it is the only way to go forward. If implantation is difficult, as it often is in finding a safe and secure place to be, a lifelong search for safety, security, warmth, love and caring may be experienced. Missing persons may well find their lives being lived in a lifelong search with families sometimes never knowing if their loved ones are alive or dead.

Suicide by asphyxiation such as a car exhaust being piped into a locked car door, or in the past a gas oven, may be linked to ether or anaesthetics that numb the feelings. Drowning may be going back to the amniotic sac. Firearms have been a very real and vivid experience of the ejaculated sperm hitting the ovum like bullets, either before conception or as the fertilized sperm on its journey, during rape or violent sexual intercourse.

Conclusion and the Future

As our research and experiences with so many wonderful yet distressed but wonderful people continued over the years we expanded our knowledge to include all traumatic places in pregnancy. Recognising that any trauma beyond tolerance could induce violent tendencies and/or suicidal tendencies, we found that for healing it was necessary to identify the historical place, the physical event and the emotional stresses.

I am very sensitive to the fact that anyone reading this without prior knowledge could be frightened or fearful of their own children’s pregnancy and its consequences. It is easy to self-blame, but it is no one’s fault. I am also aware that there could be relief in the knowledge that mental illness does have a place of origin and that there are methods of healing. Many may seem incredulous that people attempt suicide because something went wrong either as far back as conception, in gestation or with their birth process. The feelings that no one to cares, being deeply frightened, and experiencing stress beyond one’s coping capabilities is the ‘something else’ that is going on in para-suicide that is not visible.

 As to the opening question in Part I of this article that the pandemic may spike suicide, the answer may well be yes. We will find out in a future moment. Lockdown did also thrust people into womb-like situations, re-experiencing small, confined places and dark lonely times, with no light ahead to lead the way to show how life might be after the pandemic. Gaining insight into the pre and perinatal period and using this knowledge is a powerful tool for understanding suicide and trying to prevent it. It provides individuals with an actual place where their intolerable pain may be coming from. To even try and grasp the reality of the helpless tiny foetus being marinated immersed into the powerful negative emotional struggles of parents and the outside world is almost inconceivable.

Society may be slow to recognise the importance of the pre and perinatal period or may not even want the responsibility of having this knowledge. The only sin of humanity may well be ignorance. Evidence of the imprinting from the pre and perinatal period has dramatically increased over the last 20 to 50 years. There are many researchers worldwide, some of whom I have included in the biography and further reading references.

Some readers may disregard this knowledge discounting the years of study, experience and wisdom acquired by dedicated professionals in the field. Frank Lake experienced this in his lifetime but he challenged his critics to take time to discover their own birth journey. A few did but many didn’t!

What we see on the planet we have created and are still creating; what we wish to see we may create also. The knowledge we have acquired over the last hundred years is that our time in the gestation governs the rest of our lives. It is debatable as to whether suicide is chosen or not. We do have freedom of choice but this decision happens when pain exceeds our resources for coping with intolerable levels of pain which are not due to any fault of the individual. Life situations can reinforce early prenatal events.

Maybe the sceptics are those who have never allowed themselves to experience the depth of human despair. Or they are the fortunate ones who had a positive experience in pregnancy that gave them a firm foundation from the beginning, owing to conscious conception and being a wanted and welcomed baby. Fortunately, attitudes towards those who attempt suicide have changed over the years. Attempting suicide is now not seen as cowardice. Suicide recoverees report that when they feel people believe in them, they begin to believe in themselves.

We are all responsible for finding ways to eliminate unnecessary trauma and distress and to seek out their places of origin. The whole world needs to know about pre-birth life and its lifelong affect upon humanity and the planet. A new culture of kindness is evolving intermittently in society, a microcosm of the macrocosm needed globally. When nothing is too hard or difficult in order to help others in need, all babies will smile and the earth will smile back.

Part I of this article appeared in the Autumn 2023 issue of Inside Out. It is also reproduced on this website here: Suicide Part 1.

References

Grof, S. (1975). Realms of the human unconscious, (pp. 102-103). Souvenir Press.

Lake, F. (1988). Clinical theology. Abr.ed. pp. 49-55. DLT?

Lake, F. (2005). Tight corners in pastoral counseling. BPF?

Ward, S. (2019). Healing birth to heal the Earth. Twin Flame.

Bibliography & Further Reading

Adzema, M. D. (1996). The Scenery of Healing: Commentary on De Mauses’s Restaging of Fetal Trauma in War & Social Violence. APPPAH Journal, 10(4), 261-272.

Chamberlain, D. (1998). The Mind of Your Newborn Baby. North Atlantic Books.

Durkheim, E. (1951/1966). Suicide: A Study in Sociology. Free Press.

Feher, L. (1998). The Psychology of Birth: The Foundation of Human Personality. Souvenir Press.

Fodor, N. (1949). The Search for the Beloved: A Clinical Investigation of the Trauma of Birth & Prenatal Conditioning. University Books.

Foster-Ryan, S., & Monahan, L. (2001). Echoes of Suicide. Veritas.

Gilliland, A. L., & Verny, T. R. (1999). The Effects of Domestic Abuse on the Unborn Child. *APPPAH Journal, 13(3-40).

Grof, S. (1975). Realms of the Human Unconscious. Souvenir Press.

Jacobsen, B., & Bygdeman, M. (1998). Obstetric Care & Proneness of Offspring to Suicide as Adults: A Case-Control Study. *British Medical Journal, 31*(7169).

Lake, F. (1986). Clinical Theology. DLT.

Lipton, B., & Bhaerman, S. (2005). Spontaneous Evolution. Hay House.

Noble, E. (1993). Primal Connections: How Our Experiences from Conception to Birth Influence Our Emotions, Behavior & Health. Simon Schuster Fireside Books.

O’Donohue, J. (2003). Divine Beauty: The Invisible Embrace. Bantam Press.

Pert, C. B. (1997/2003). Molecules of Emotion. Scribner.

Roedding, J. (1991). Birth Trauma & Suicide: A Study of the Relationship between Near-Death Experience & Later Suicidal Behavior. APPPAH Journal, 6(2), Winter 1991.

Salk, L. (1966). Thoughts on the Concept of Imprinting & Its Place in Early Human Development. *Canadian Psychiatric Association Journal, 11.

Turner, J. R. G., & Troya. (1996/2017). Echoes from Hell: KZ Memories Booklet.

Ward, S. (2004). Suicide & Pre & Perinatal Psychotherapy. APPPAH Journal, 19(2), Winter 2004.

Ward, S. (2019). Fractals from the Womb: A Journey through Pre & Perinatal Psychotherapy. Twin Flame Productions.

Ward, S. (2020). Birth Earth Our Future. Twin Flame Productions.

Shirley lives in County Clare and is happy to talk to people about her work as a psychotherapist since 1979. She pioneered Pre and Perinatal Psychotherapy from the School of Doctor Frank Lake with her colleague, the late Alison Hunter.

Website www.shirleyward.org and email shirley@shirleyward.org